Faith and Repentance

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'".

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Repentance in Light of Luke 13

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth. Deep sigh. It is Saturday, March 28th, 2020. And I am in the studio today, that is in the church. There's not anybody around here. I'm gonna have to start dumping my own trash because I think we canceled the cleaning services at the church.

Snow plowing people I think are done, although we might get a couple inches of snow later this week, maybe an inch or two. So that's pretty much done. What other services don't we need at the church? Trash, collection, and I kind of wish that it was back in the old days where we had lots of drive-in movie theaters and then I could stand on top of the snack bar, preach a Sunday morning sermon, and have all the cars pull up.

And these days, you don't have to put that little speaker in your window. You just turn it to the right AM or FM station, whatever that is. People are out and about, walking, talking. They're doing all kinds of things like that.

And we will be live streaming again. I don't know when that will stop. I'm tempted to start live services maybe sooner than what our governor might like, but that's another story. The last few times I've been in the radio studio, we've been talking about repentance.

And it is a very timely message when Luke 13 states, there were some present at that very time who told him, Jesus, about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices and he answered them.

Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way? Jesus said, no, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Are those 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem?

Jesus responds, no, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. In our today's show, in our today's show, in today's show, in our show today. Why can't I talk today? I have no idea.

I'm glad I'm not doing a Facebook live thing right now. I wanna talk a little bit about repentance. If you haven't listened to the two earlier shows on Luke 13, you might wanna catch up on those, but I'm today focusing in on repentance and what is repentance?

What repentance is not? How does it tie in with faith? Does it happen at the same time of faith? Is it a logically prior to faith? Jesus here in Luke 13 is dealing with people in two situations that people died in a tragic way, in a very unexpected way.

And as commentators will tell us, both of these groups thought they were safe. The one group was probably in the temple, right? And they are making sacrifices. The other group was in a tower or near a tower.

And you think of tower as, I guess if I said tower, what popped in your mind, you'd probably say Tower of Babel, Tower of London, Tower of Pisa. But when I think of tower, I think of strength, stability, fortress, that kind of thing.

And both of these groups of people, they think they were safe. They had no inkling of what was going to come upon them. And actually the first group, right, they're doing something religious. They're doing something, not some pagan religion, they're doing what Moses said to do.

I don't know exactly when this was, if this was before Jesus came onto his public ministry or it was something after. I'm not sure the timing of when Pilate had killed via his henchmen, those people sacrificing.

But the point here is you've got to be ready yourself. To both of these groups, they didn't know it was coming, but they should have known it was coming eventually. In other words, we ought to be ready to die.

We are all dying as it were, slowly because of, you can see your gray hair, if you've got that, and I'm losing hair some places, gaining hair in other places I didn't want to gain it, like my ears, my nose.

I used to have to just shave from kind of like my upper lip down. And now you go from your upper lip down, but up high up, like can I have hair growing close to my eyes? This is crazy, but we have to be ready.

The point here is it's not a matter of were they were sinners, but everybody's sin, are you ready? The point is not, well, they sin more and God killed them for a specific sin. While that's true in certain cases, and I think of Herod or Sodom and Gomorrah or other times, Ananias and Sapphira, you can't just look at people generally and providentially and read providence by saying, well, they sin more, therefore they died.

Now the people who get the coronavirus, for instance, I mean, there's a thousand coronaviruses, right? Or hundreds, tons, but this particular coronavirus 19 or whatever the number is, the ones that died, were they were sinners?

Is that the lesson we should learn from all this virus stuff? No, I mean, you would realize that as I say it, it sounds dumb, but what's the lesson? Well, the lesson is, and I don't mean from a public service standpoint or make sure we have enough mask standpoints or respirators, but from a spiritual perspective, the point should be, well, that's going to be us one day.

I turn 60 very soon and comparatively to the life I've lived, I don't have that much longer to go. And it could be a matter of hours, days, months, years, but probably not too many decades, right? Let's say I live another 20 years.

I don't know, I would like to live another 20 years, I guess, in some regards. Maybe I will, maybe I won't, I have no idea. But the point here is, it would be a tragedy to look at other tragedies and realize that somehow we are immune from them.

Every person listening, every person you know, if you're listening, everybody's gonna die. And so therefore, what's the lesson? You need to repent because otherwise you're going to perish eternally. Jesus said in John 8, 24, I said therefore to you that you shall die in your sins for unless you believe that I am He, you shall die in your sins.

And I explained for a long period of time in the last two shows that you need a sin bearer. Either you're gonna have to perfectly obey the law or trust in one who takes away your law breaking and then also supplies you with law keeping through the doctrine of imputation, right?

Reckoning, accounting, legal courtroom language, forensic language, alien righteousness credited to your account because of the Lord Jesus. Now, when we think about repentance here, Jesus did not say, oh, you should believe.

Could He have said that? Well, of course He could have. Why did He say repent? Remember in Luke chapter five, He said, I didn't come to call the sinners but the righteous to repentance. No, I didn't come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.

Which one did He say? Let's see if I can just think. I didn't come to call the sinners but righteous to repentance. That doesn't make sense. Well, this is why this is called practice. I've not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance, 532.

I've not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. I'm a professional radio host, by the way. Now, I think if you look at this doctrine of repentance and faith, a few things will pop into your mind.

And I just think it's probably good for us to walk through. If you'd like to read a lot about this, you could read the whole price by Sinclair Ferguson. Sometimes the Bible says, believe, Acts 16, John 3, Romans 10, Ephesians 2, or if it doesn't use it in the imperative sense, it'll just say, believe, you know, it's through faith.

And so you'll see that dominating response to the gospel, the person and work of Jesus. It's to believe, right? And you think of belief as knowledge, assent, and trust. There's a faith that doesn't save.

And that's a regular thing that we hear. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. But also sometimes we'll just read, it says, repent, like in our passage here in Luke chapter 13. Sometimes both are mentioned, Acts chapter 20, Mark chapter one.

And you ask yourself the question, why would they both be given? Why would only one be given? Why stress one and not the other? And I think those are questions that people have dealt with for a long time.

If you just say repent or believe, those are both adequate. And I often and regularly say, repent and believe. But what really is repentance and what really is faith? I think if you look at it in this way, it will help you.

There's a logical order and there's a chronological order or a chronological aspect. Chronologically, can you have an unrepentant faith and can you have an unbelieving repentance? It's harder when you think that way because then you go, well, I don't think those really work out.

If you have a faith, it will be a faith that repents, a repenting faith. If you have repentance, it's going to be a trusting, believing repentance, right? Therefore, when you think about chronologically, I don't really try to differentiate the two, right?

Same thing with faith and regeneration. I don't try to say there's a chronological difference. There's not a nanosecond in between or a moment or a time period. If I say repent or believe, what am I really saying?

Sinclair Ferguson puts it this way. He calls it a synecdoche. And that's, by the way, spelled S-Y-N-E-C-D-O-C-H-E. And a synecdoche is a figure of speech used and it is taking a part, giving a part, but signifying the whole.

And therefore, when you say, I'm going to give you a part of this, but I'm really meaning the whole, if I said repent, synecdoche means it's really repent and believe. Or if I said believe, both function the same way as the synecdoche.

And I think that's a good way to work through it. Sometimes people are told to repent. Sometimes people are told to believe. And if you think about both must be involved, you're going to be fine. So when it comes to repentance, it's the way you think about sin.

And when it comes to faith, it's how you think about the Lord Jesus. That's the best way to do it. And therefore, there's kind of different realms when you think of repentance and faith. I don't think there's a time gap between faith and repentance, but there is a logical order to this faith and repentance and which one is which.

Sinclair Ferguson, in his book, will go along with Thomas Boston and the Merrow men and teach. And by the way, there are theologians on different ends of the spectrum in terms of the logical order. Thomas Boston said there's the logical priority of faith.

And he quotes, Ferguson quotes Boston, quote, in the order of nature, in terms of the inner logic of the gospel and the way its grammar functions, repentance can never be said to precede faith. Herman Vitsios, the Dutch theologian, talks about faith and repentance coming from the same principle of spiritual life.

And it's difficult, therefore, to determine which one comes first. He says, quote, talking about a person who's made alive, sees, quote, itself defiled and undone with innumerable sins and simultaneously sees Christ full of grace, truth, and salvation.

So when it comes to sin, that's repentance, he sees himself a sinner, and then he simultaneously sees Christ full of grace, truth, and salvation. And therefore he, with shame and sorrow, runs to Christ to be forgiven.

So you kind of got two different views here when it comes to logical progression. But I don't think there's, well, do we have another view? John Murray, no priority. Faith and repentance are independent because faith is faith in Christ for salvation from sin.

So we have three options. So we have one, I'm gonna write this in my notes so I don't forget, three, there's kind of three views. Okay, not chronologically, but logically, three views. Which view should we take?

Listen to John Calvin, both repentance and forgiveness of sins. That is newness of life and free reconciliation are conferred on us by Christ and are both attained by us through faith. And I'm gonna side with Ferguson and Calvin and say the priority logically is faith.

Calvin goes on, it ought to be a fact beyond controversy that repentance not only constantly follows faith, but is born of faith. For since pardon and forgiveness are offered through the preaching of the gospel in order that the sinner, freed from the tyranny of Satan, the yoke of sin and the miserable bondage of vices may cross over into the kingdom of God.

Surely no one can embrace the grace of the gospel without betaking himself then from the errors of his past life into the right way and applying his whole effort to the practice of repentance. There are some, however, who suppose that repentance precedes faith rather than flows from it or is produced by it as a fruit from a tree.

Such persons have never known the power of repentance and are moved to feel this way by an unduly slight argument, end quote. Well, what's Calvin trying to say? Of course, there's gonna be repentance involved, but trying to figure out, does it come as a fruit of faith or does it lead to faith?

And he is going to teach that it is, repentance is a fruit of faith. What else does Calvin say? When we refer the origin of repentance to faith, we do not imagine some space of time during which it brings it to birth, but we do mean to show that a man cannot aptly cannot apply himself seriously to repentance without knowing himself to belong to God.

In other words, unless you're believing in God, how could you repent? But no one is truly persuaded that he belongs to God unless he's first recognized God's grace. Well, what's the point? I guess I'm just gonna have to say in summary, the point is, if you call somebody to repent, you're implying believe.

If you call somebody to believe, you're implying repentance. And if you do want to think about them as two sides of the same coin, two different sides of the same coin, in terms of how this happens, you know, it's a repentant faith and a believing repentance, that's fine by me.

What I don't want you to do is get caught up in this kind of street evangelism, kind of evangelistic fervor, lordship thing where you've got to tell people to repent all the time or you're not really preaching the gospel.

So if I just tell people to believe and never say repent, well, I should probably say repent sometimes. Should I? Not, yes. But if I just tell people, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, sola fide, then am I not somehow telling people the right response to the gospel?

Repentance isn't changing your life. How could you change your life and then be saved? Fruits of repentance hasn't changed life, but you're thinking differently about your sin. And before you thought it was a nuisance, it was a boo-boo, it caused you problems, and now you realize it's against a thrice holy God.

We call people to repent and believe. And with WTG shed, WGT shed, though faith and repentance are inseparable and simultaneous, yet in the order of nature, faith precedes repentance. Louis Burkhoff, there is no doubt that logically repentance and knowledge of sin must precede faith that yields to Christ entrusting love.

He said the opposite. Okay, let's just keep throwing these things out to make the bad show worse. John Murray, an unnecessary question and the assistance that one is prior to the other is futile. There is no priority.

The faith that is under salvation is a penitent faith and the repentance that is under life is a believing repentance. Saving faith is permeated with repentance and repentance is permeated with saving faith.

Twin graces as Dabney calls it. Maybe we're getting into too much of the psychological components. I don't mean like psych stuff today, but just what goes on in the person. The good news is I can tell people to repent and believe.

I can tell them to believe. I can tell them to repent. When Jesus says repent, then we know exactly what he's thinking. We don't wanna ever fall into the air though that people have to change their life.

That's what repentance is for the unbeliever because they're dead in trespasses and sins and they can't. You can't do anything in order to be saved, right? You only can trust because if you have to do something, it's tarred by fallen nature and you can't do it.

You have to trust in something that's outside of yourself that is something, the righteousness of Christ of some one. What else do we have here? Let's just read this J .C. Ryle. He usually seems pretty good.

But as you can tell, I had a bunch of this data here and I hadn't read it. This is the first time I'm reading it. Oh man. J .C. Ryle. Is that Ryle? But now, is the picture of repentance complete? Can I leave the subject here and go on?

I cannot do it. There remains yet one thing behind which ought never to be forgotten. True repentance, such as I have just described is never alone in the heart of any man. It always has a companion, a blessed companion.

It is always accompanied by lively faith in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Whenever faith is or wherever it is, there is repentance. Wherever repentance is, there's always faith. I'm bold to say that the two graces are never found separate, one from another, just as you cannot have the sun without the light or ice without the cold.

They always go side by side. Well, that's true, but I'm thinking about logically. I'm not thinking about chronologically. Well, let's get back to the passage and we know that you should repent. If you're not believing, you should be repenting.

If you're not repenting, you should be believing. I could even say it like that. But what does Jesus go on to say? It's fascinating, right after the passage in Luke 13, one to five, and he told this parable.

A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vine dresser, look, for three years now, I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and I find none.

Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground? And he answered him, sir, let it alone this year also until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it shall bear fruit next year, well and good. But if not, you can cut it down.

Now you can think about what's going on in Israel as a nation and the backdrop with this parable and the fig tree and the vineyard and Isaiah five. The point is simple, judgments soon, right? This is not gonna go on and on and on and on and on.

There will be judgment soon enough. Therefore you need to repent because judgment is near. You think, well, God's always been gracious to me and good to me as an unbeliever and my life's pretty good. He always will be gracious.

He'll always be patient. I haven't got killed yet. I called God to, you know, if there is a God, you know, strike me with lightning kind of thing and he hasn't done it you don't wanna presume on the patience of God.

That's something that you want to avoid. And then the last thing I wanna say today is if you're a Christian, this whole issue of death and dying, you should be thinking to yourself, am I really afraid of death?

Now you might be pensive or apprehensive or afraid of, you know, what kind of death will I die? But you ought not to be afraid of death itself because you know the one who has conquered death and you ought not to be afraid and you shouldn't fear.

Because you have someone who is on your side, your friend, your brother, your advocate, your mediator, your representative, your federal head, your savior, the Lord Jesus, and he has conquered death. And he tells you to trust in him.

And he through his death might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil. And Jesus will deliver all those through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. That's not something you have to do is to be a slave to the fear of death.

Hebrews chapter two is super clear about that. Satan had a stick and that stick was death. Now that death has been given the death blow as it were, Jesus took that in our place. Jesus dies, right? God without a body can't die.

So God, the son takes on human flesh and then he dies. And Jesus, the son of God, first John three says, appeared to destroy the works of the devil. What power does the devil have? I guess the devil can go to God and say, this person sinned and you ought to kill them.

And now that the substitute Jesus has died in their place, he no longer has that penalty to be demanded because it's done in the Lord Jesus. Well, my name is Mike Abendroth. We've rambled a little bit today about repentance and faith.

If you call people to faith, great. Call people to repentance, great. If you say repent and believe, great. Repentance has to do with what do you think about sin and faith? What do you think about the Lord Jesus?

Program Sign-Off and Church Information

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.